Donald Trump’s electoral victory was historic in a race that would have been the first in the United States.
A victory for Kamala Harris would have made her the first female president. Instead, Trump will be the first user convicted of a crime to assume the presidency of the United States.
The president-elect was criminally convicted last week for attempting to conceal a secret cash payment to porn star Stormy Daniels during his 2016 campaign.
He was convicted of 34 counts of falsifying business records to commit voter fraud in May of last year. He continues to deny the allegations and call the matter a “witch hunt. “
Trump, who will take office as president on Jan. 20, has also been concerned about other state and federal felony cases, as well as some civil cases.
He pleaded not guilty to all of the charges against him and alleged the prosecutions were politically motivated.
With his election victory, most cases were ignored or suspended, but what will happen to Mr. Trump when he returns to the White House?
‘Hush money’ – state case
This is the case of Stormy Daniels, whom Trump found guilty of covering up the $130,000 payment made through her then-lawyer for her silence before the 2016 election, regarding a sexual encounter she claims to have had a decade earlier. .
While he could have faced up to four years in prison, Manhattan Judge Juan M Merchan handed the president-elect a no-penalty sentence, also called an unconditional discharge.
Under New York state law, an unconditional discharge is a sentence imposed “without imprisonment, fine or probation supervision”.
The sentence is pronounced when the sentence handed down “considers that it would be of no use to impose any conditions on the release of the accused,” according to the law.
Read more:Trump spared jail or fine – as it happened
This means that Trump’s hush money case has been resolved without sanctions that could interfere with his return to the White House, but it does mean that he will be the first president to be sworn in as a convicted felon.
Appearing in court via video link, the president-elect again claimed the case against him was a “political witch-hunt,” and said: “I was treated very unfairly and I thank you very much.”
Election subversion – federal case
Donald Trump was also charged with attempting to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election, which he lost to Joe Biden.
He had pleaded guilty to the felons’ fees, accusing him of conspiring to obstruct the procedure for collecting and certifying the results.
He was also accused of “dishonesty, fraud and deception” and spreading “widespread and destabilizing lies about election fraud. “
But in July last year, the Supreme Court, with its conservative majority, granted former presidents broad immunity from criminal prosecution after arguments from the president-elect that he could not be prosecuted for official actions taken during his time in the White House.
The ruling all but ended Special Counsel Jack Smith’s election subversion case against Mr Trump, and after the Republican’s election win in November, prosecutors filed to drop the charges.
In January – despite Mr Trump’s attempt to block it – a report from Mr Smith about the charges was released by the Department of Justice, which said the president-elect engaged in an unprecedented criminal effort to overturn his 2020 election defeat.
The prosecutor said Mr Trump “inspired his supporters to commit acts of physical violence” in the January 6 riots and knowingly spread a false narrative about fraud in the 2020 election.
In response, Mr Trump called Mr Smith “deranged” and criticised the report’s “fake findings”.
Electoral interference – state case
Trump was officially jailed in the Fulton County, Georgia, jail in August 2023, charged with an alleged plot to overturn his defeat, particularly in that battleground state in the 2020 election.
The outcome of that year’s Georgia election was memorably close, prompting two recounts, but in the end Biden won with 11,779 votes, or 0. 23% of the five million cast.
It was certified by both Georgia’s Republican governor Brian Kemp and secretary of state Brad Raffensperger. But Mr Trump did not accept the result.
Prosecutors used state anti-racketeering laws, developed to fight organized crime, to brand him and others, his former attorney Rudy Giuliani.
Trump has pleaded guilty (along with 8 of his 14 co-defendants, including former New York mayor and lawyer Rudy Giuliani) and is looking forward to the case.
Although this case is technically still ongoing, it is largely on hold.
The case faced several upheavals after the president-elect’s lawyers attempted to disqualify the lead prosecutor, Fulton County Prosecutor Fani Willis, alleging alleged misconduct related to her beyond her relationship with attorney Nathan Wade.
Willis was barred from prosecuting through an appeals court in December. She filed an appeal this month.
Under state law, if a district is disqualified, so is its office.
The case is then referred to the executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, who must find another prosecutor – a process that can take years.
The court will also have to determine whether a state-level prosecutor can prosecute a sitting president once proceedings resume.
As of writing, Judge Scott McAffe has also dismissed five of the 13 charges against the president-elect.
Misuse of classified – federal case
Special Counsel Jack Smith’s second case against President-elect Mr. Trump had also been charged with classified documents he allegedly stole from the White House, adding the deletion of CCTV footage of boxes from his move to his Florida home. .
However, a judge threw out this case against him on 15 July.
According to the federal indictment, some documents included details about the United States’ nuclear weapons programs, the vulnerabilities of the country and its allies, and plans for retaliatory military strikes.
Prosecutors had appealed the decision, but an appeals court agreed to uphold the dismissal in November.
Mr Smith then resigned from the Department of Justice on 11 January after submitting his report in the election interference case.
Civil cases
Mr Trump is also appealing several civil lawsuits totalling more than $500m (about £388m), which won’t be affected by his win.
These come with a civil fraud case in New York state and lawsuits filed through E Jean Carroll, who sued him for allegedly sexually assaulting her in the 1990s and defaming her when he was first president.
On December 30, a federal appeals court upheld a Manhattan jury’s $5 million award for defamation and sexual abuse.
A second jury – that awarded Ms Carroll an additional $83.3m in damages for comments Trump had made about her while he was president – had been instructed by the judge to accept the first jury’s finding that Trump had sexually abused the writer. Mr Trump is still appealing that verdict
Mr Trump is also facing eight pending civil suits related to the attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, following his complaints of voter fraud in the 2020 election.
No trial date has been set, but with appeals these could take months or even longer to be determined, Sky’s US partner network NBC reports.
Can Trump forgive himself?
With either federal instances dismissed, the president-elect does want to forgive himself.
Sky News US correspondent James Matthews said after Trump’s victory in November that such a move is within the president’s power, although self-pardon has never been legally tested.
The pardon factor does not apply to state cases, the president-elect can only be pardoned because of the cash conviction of New York Gov. Kathy Hocul, a Democrat.
Matthews noted in November however that Trump’s conviction and prosecution in other cases – such as Georgia – were weakened by the Supreme Court ruling in favour of immunity.
“Nor can evidence of official acts be used in evidence to support the prosecution of a crime committed out of office,” the correspondent said.
He then said that he would “expect Trump’s lawyers to point to the evidence used to convict him — the phone calls and habit while he was president — and argue that they relate to official acts and that, according to the Supreme Court’s ruling, it would be declared inadmissible. “
Should the now-paused Georgia case be resumed, prosecutors would face difficulty bringing charges against him.